suddenness, the sheer savagery of the attack was almost too much to grasp.
She shifted her scan forward, to the carrier battlegroup. Only seven ships remained in planetary orbit; the others had boosted moments before, were already accelerating hard out-system. Those seven, she saw with considerable relief, all were accelerating, breaking orbit, turning in toward the planet to use Haris’s gravity to their advantage.
The Turusch, of course, would have had precise targeting information for the planet, could accurately strike the colony outposts from light seconds out. Ships, however, could leave their predictable orbits and not be there when the beams or hivel projectiles arrived.
Collins’ scanner picked up numerous faint straight-line trails of ionization ahead, the traces of near-c impactors flashing through dust and stray molecules of atmosphere just ahead of where the fleet had been orbiting scant moments before.
The Confederation had tried exactly the same tactics against the Turusch fleet earlier, with considerably greater success. It appeared that the enemy had missed all seven human warships.
But the thought of what was happening on the planet astern still burned. Why?…
It made no sense. The Turusch had bombarded the Marine perimeter for over a week; at any time they could have accelerated a rock big enough to vaporize a continent, but they hadn’t. They’d been trying to capture the place, not obliterate it.
That strategy, evidently, had changed. The Turusch had just annihilated all human outposts remaining on the planet, killing some tens of thousands of civilians.
Why?
She shook the thought aside. Strategists, xenopsychologists, and admirals could worry about that later. Her problem now was the knowledge that there would be high-G fighters coming in immediately behind the near-c kinetic impactors.
There!
The Toads were coming in hot, decelerating hard in order to engage ship-to-ship. Among them were Confederation Starhawks—the gravfighters of Sandy Jorgenson’s Black Lightnings, following the leading wave of Toads in, trying to burn them down.
The battleship Spirit of Confederation opened up with her long-range fusion cannon, and a constellation of oncoming Turusch fighters smeared into tiny, brilliant novae. And then the enemy fighters were sweeping into the battlegroup like avenging angels of death.
CIC, TC/USNA CVS America
Haris Space, Eta Boötis System
1947 hours, TFT
“Enemy fighters at two-three-zero plus five-one, engaging!” Johanna Hughes announced.
Koenig watched the unfolding action on the tactical display—green icons representing Confederation vessels, red the enemy, with a vast, ghosted gray sphere showing the position of Eta Boötis IV.
More hivel impactors, launched at closer ranges, might still be out there, coming fast. If the carrier squadron could maneuver around behind the planet, use the planet as a shield, they might be able to delay acceleration long enough to take the remaining fighters on board.
That was the true hell of the tacsit. Right now, there were sixteen gravfighters out there, plus four Nightshade close-support gunships and one last, lumbering shuttle packed with civilians and Marines. If America boosted for c, the gravfighters, with their high accelerations, could catch up—assuming the Toads let them—but the shuttle and the gunships would be left behind.
And even the fighters were at risk. Trapping on board a carrier under acceleration was not for the fainthearted, nor was there a promise of success.
But the seven capital ships were vulnerable if they stayed put. They might hold the Toad fighters at bay for a time, but Koenig was willing to bet that Turusch capital ships were out there, lots of them, still undetected and burning in tight on the fighters’ wakes. If the squadron didn’t start boosting for c, they would be trapped here, pinned against the planet and annihilated one by one.
A gravfighter—one of the Lightnings—had burned out a Toad, but now two more Toads had dropped onto his tail. He listened to the voices of the cockpit chatter, relayed back to America’s CIC by the cloud of battlespace drones serving as comm relays and unmanned intel platforms.
“Lightning, Lightning Five! I got two on my tail!”
“Five, One! Break left, break left!”
“Copy One, breaking left! … they’re still—”
One of the green pinpoints in the tac display winked out. A tight formation of Turusch fighters were closing on the knot of Starhawks, slashing at them with beam weapons.
“Comm! Make to the Spirit,” Koenig ordered. “Break up those Toad clusters! Get them off our people!”
“Aye, sir.”
The Spirit of Confederation had the most accurate of long-range weapons in the formation, with railguns and fusion beams that could pop something as small as a fighter at a range of over one light second.
Of course, she still needed a good idea of where the target would be one second after firing—that was the single major limiting factor in space combat. But so long as the target held course and speed—or a constant rate of acceleration—for more than a second, her targeting computers gave her uncanny accuracy.
Another of the Black Lightnings vanished in a white flare of incandescence.
“Make to all fighters,” Koenig told the communications officer. “Break off and rejoin the battlegroup. Prepare for underway trap.”
“Aye, aye, sir!”
He looked into the tac display again. Five fighters, a shuttle, and four gunships still coming up from the surface … and ten gravfighters of the Black Lightnings tangled in a fur ball with the Trash. Damn. They needed to get that transport aboard. The display readout showed 214 people packed on board—God! They must be sitting in one another’s laps! UC-154s were rated for about 180 at most.
He juggled with the possibility of launching another fighter squadron, then decided against it. More fighters might help the long odds against those Toads, but the rest of the Turusch fleet would be along very shortly, of that he was certain. He already stood to loose seventeen good gravfighter pilots out there. He didn’t want the number to rise to twenty-nine.
If the capital ships could hold off that swarm of incoming Toads with their point-defense weapons, maybe they could bring the fighters and the shuttle on board as well.
But it was going to be damned tight.
Dragon One
Above Eta Boötis IV
1948 hours, TFT
Allyn heard the orders come down from America’s CIC—rendevous with the carrier. Prepare for underway trap.
But she saw a tactical opportunity.
As the fighters continued to climb up out of Eta Boötis
